


of flavoured names and coloured sounds

by Pink Panda (Ejacyeolation)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dramione end game duh, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts, Light Angst, Order Member Draco Malfoy, Pining Draco Malfoy, Prefect Draco, Prefect Hermione, Romance, Secret Relationship, Smut, Spy Draco Malfoy, Synesthesia, Synesthesia!Draco, Synesthete! Draco Malfoy, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejacyeolation/pseuds/Pink%20Panda
Summary: "He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him."In which Draco just wants to know what colour Hermione's moans would be. He also wants to know if her skin would taste as sweet as her surname or maybe as intoxicating as her given name.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 97
Kudos: 706





	1. Chapter 1

_synaesthesia: a condition in which two or more of the five senses that most people experience separately are mixed so that, for example, a person may see colour when they hear a particular sound or read a particular word_

He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. They create a firework display in front of him whenever they talk, varying in intensity depending on the nature of their conversation. He falls asleep to soft shades of blue and wakes up to freckles of purple.

(The albino peacocks produce varying shades of reds and violets, the house-elves create splashy tones that have the tendency to give him a headache when subjected to prolonged exposure.)

It’s only later, when he grows up, that he starts to discover the names of these colours, stops referring to them as various shades of the same six hues he knows and combinations of them. He comes to learn that his mother’s voice is composed of aquamarine notes, interspersed with azure, Maya blue, Bleu de France, teal, and harbour grey. When he tells her this, she gives him a curious look and makes him promise he would never tell anyone about these sensory experiences of his.

Tasting words and names is an experience that is more peculiar and, sometimes, less pleasant. As a child, the flavours are fairly simple: words like absinthe, python, moth, and thunder taste bitter, while words like cheery, rye, and cutlery taste sweet. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him. When he hears the word Dementor, he develops a sudden overwhelming urge to vomit as the word tastes like rotten meat and mouldy bread. The meaning of the word sends a chill down his spine and he thinks his taste buds hit the mark with that one.

(Pansy, his childhood friend, has a name that tastes like steamed broccoli, and the taste is so odd that he never says her name when he fucks her, much to the witch’s disdain. It doesn’t help that her moans are coloured like coal.)

Harry Potter’s name is a mixture of sweet and smoky. The name Harry is sweet, much like cheery and rye, but he finds the sweetness nauseating. Potter, on the other hand, is smoky, so he settles with that and decides to call the boy the smoky name. The name Ron tastes like milk that’s been left out for hours, better poured down the drain than allowed to linger on the tongue. The surname isn’t much better, reminding him of the time his father had made him eat some blue cheese and he gagged it all out, leaving his tongue and throat burning with stomach acid. Every time he says the ginger’s name, his face automatically pulls into a sneer of disgust, his taste buds protesting the abuse.

During their first year, most everyone’s voices make him see light colours, but as they grow older the male voices turn darker shades and the females’ a softer hue. Some voices grate on his nerves, the explosion of colours too vivid, with no sense of harmony, and he often finds himself snapping at these people to shut up.

That’s when he becomes certain that this condition is unique to him. If they could see the colours he sees and if they could taste the flavours he tastes, they would all be snappish too.

Then there’s Hermione Granger.

Hermione reminds him of a summer trip his family had taken to France before his first year at Hogwarts. His father, ever the champion of luxurious delicacies and drinks, always insisting that he must develop a taste for the finer things, had insisted that his mother let him sample a glass of white wine.

His eleven-year-old tongue quickly detected hints of white peach, dill, and coconut, but they were overwhelmed by the bitterness of the alcohol. He had not appreciated the taste then, not even trying to hide his grimace to the amusement of his parents.

“When you’re older, you’ll learn to value the flavour of an excellent Sauvignon Blanc,” his father had reassured him.

Now the intoxicating flavour is back, every time he hears Potter call her name and every time it flashes through his mind. The taste of it never changes throughout the years, but his reaction to it does. Understandably, his younger self only felt disgust, but the older he got the more willing he became to accept that his father had been right all along—he’s learned to value the taste of Hermione’s name, learned to savour the white peach along with the dryness unique to the drink.

Sometimes, he could convince himself that he could get drunk just from her name.

Granger was safer, and even in his younger years he had enjoyed the taste of the surname on his tongue. Granger tastes like green apples. It’s the first thing he grabs at the dining table every morning for breakfast, and it’s a flavour that he chases after constantly. His immature self had found a way to say it every chance he could get, enjoying the sudden burst of sweet and tart inside his mouth with every call of her name. He would resort to taunting, teasing her about being a swot, insulting her and making sure to use her last name by the end of every sentence.

He had been foolish, he soon realises, and so he stops saying her name to her face all the time lest people notice that he has developed an unhealthy habit out of it. He says it in private now, in the confines of the baths and in the privacy of his bedroom. At first it had only been so he could taste the green apples, so he could relive over and over again the tangy sweetness of her name, but later on it became less innocent.

(Later on, he started to favour the alcohol of her given name over the fruit of her surname whenever he would stroke his cock through his sleeping trousers.)

Unsurprisingly, the word Mudblood tastes like dirt in his mouth. When he first hurls it at her, the sensation is so intense that he almost gags before the weasel can even attempt his slug-eating spell at him. It repulses him, but she had insulted him and annoyed him to no end, and not even the sweetness of her name could soothe the headache he got from the bursts of vibrant colours her voice made him see whenever she opened her filthy mouth. Potions quickly became his favourite subject, not only because his godfather favoured him, but because he almost never allows Granger to recite in class.

He finds that his annoyance slowly dissipates over the years as her voice goes from irritating and migraine-inducing to almost melodic and soothing. The colours stop being so harsh, become muted shades or pastel versions of themselves. He finds that in the splashes of colour he sees every minute of his waking hours, he looks forward to seeing hers.

The first time he realises her voice has ceased to be a source of annoyance for him is during their third year. It’s an odd thing to feel, to suddenly yearn to hear the colours of her voice, when two years ago he had wanted to bolt from every room she was occupying. That annoys him, too, because all his life he’s been told that his kind should rule the wizarding world and her kind should not even be welcomed, so who is she to drive him out of a room? Throughout their first and second year in Hogwarts, he would stay, not only because he had no choice but to stay in classes he shared with her, but because he’s a pureblood and she’s nothing but that dirty word that makes him gag.

The sound of her palm connecting with his face is the colour of autumn leaves, a bright orange thunder-like streak that flashes behind his closed eyes. Everything is a sensory blur, and he finds himself running away from her, from them, feeling the shame welling in his chest and the taste of her given name still heavy on his tongue.

The word foul tastes like oatmeal and the word evil tastes like cold chicken soup.

The yule ball is a ticket to a night of sensory overload. The music they dance to causes him to nearly go into a catatonic state, his head thrown back and his eyes following the lights bursting in and out with every note and every chord. Pansy has been clinging to him ever since he had first fucked her three weeks ago, and now he knows what a colossal mistake it had been to ask her to be his date to this ball. She has somehow convinced herself that they’re exclusively seeing each other, much to his disappointment, so he’s been planning to “break up” with her despite his father’s approval of their supposed relationship.

He’s thinking of a way to tell her the sex is good (not good enough really, considering the taste of her name and the colours of her voice) but he’s simply not looking for a relationship when he catches sight of _her_ again. Immediately the spiked punch is replaced by Sauvignon Blanc and green apples at the thought of her name. She’s a periwinkle blue blur from his vantage point, but from what he had seen approximately an hour ago, she’s an absolute stunner tonight.

He turns his head so he can fully watch her, difficult as it may be with the pulsing colours interrupting his vision, and all but forgets the witch hanging on to his arm. He watches her dance with Krum, ignores Pansy’s demands for him to take her to the dancefloor, and then barely notices when his date finally lets go of his arms and stomps away from him. He watches Granger skip over to her friends, then he watches her get into a row with the weasel before promptly walking out of the ballroom.

None of her friends move to follow her, and he doesn’t know what possesses him to do it but he’s rising to his feet and moving towards the direction she had gone to. He keeps walking down the hallway until he spots her, snivelling in an alcove and using her hands to wipe at her face. When he gets close enough, he sees that her makeup is ruined, but it’s the fact that he doesn’t seem to mind that gives him pause.

“If you’re pining after the weasel, don’t you think you should have gone with him as your date?” he asks, startling her.

She jumps up and whips around to face him, wand already tightly held in one of her hands, tear tracks still marring her face. “Malfoy? Did you… _did you follow me out here?_ ”

He shrugs, moving to plop himself down to take her abandoned seat on the alcove. “I think I may be drunk,” he admits, the colours still blurring his vision and the word alcove tastes like garlic in his mouth.

She eyes him, her gaze darting back and forth between him and the empty hallway. He can practically hear her calculating her next steps, can hear the cogs in her brain working double time to assess the conundrum in front of her.

He cringes, the taste of residual beeswax coating his tongue at the thought of the word conundrum.

“How can you be drunk? Alcohol’s not allowed—”

“We spiked the punch,” he cuts her off, reaching for the flask hidden in the inner pockets of his robes. She stiffens, her wand raising ever so slightly to point at him, but he just retrieves the flask and waves it at her. “Paranoid.”

Granger watches him return the flask and fold his wandless hands on his lap where she can see them. “Well, it was very bizarre chatting with you, Malfoy.” With that, she turns to walk away, the floaty periwinkle blue robes moving with the sway of her hips.

When he returns to his dorm room, he places about half a dozen silencing charms on his bed, draws the curtains closed, and for the very first time, wanks himself off to images of Hermione Granger.

They’re prefects, and he should have expected this to happen. Sooner or later they would get paired to do patrols together, he had known this, but he had been foolish enough to neglect to prepare for it. He knows that her voice will no longer make his head throb, has been familiar with the shades of her still-swotty voice for more than two years now.

The castle is quiet, and his eyes are blessedly free of colours bursting around his vision as he and Granger walk the castle grounds side by side. Neither of them speaks, but the silence isn’t antagonistic. Last month, they had been paired up for an Astronomy assignment, and although everyone in the bloody castle had been surprised by the pairing and had expected things to blow up, they miraculously did not.

Granger may be an insufferable know-it-all as his godfather had put it, but her diligence, as he’s come to learn, perfectly complements his occasional bouts of perfectionism. He had fully expected them to buttheads, get into rows as bad as the one that had landed him that nasty slap back in third year, but they had ended up working quite well with each other. By the end of the two week-long assignment, he had to begrudgingly admit to himself that his father had been wrong to accuse her of cheating to get good grades.

It had hurt his pride and he had ignored her completely after that. He only resumed “talking” to her last week, when she had come up to him to ask if he was finished with the DADA book lying on his table in the library. He had wanted to say no, tell her to bugger off and find her own copy, but had found himself gesturing for her to take it.

The witch had instead taken the seat in front of him and began working on her own essay right there, in his space. He had floundered for a good minute or two, just staring at her furiously scribbling on a piece of parchment, getting ink everywhere. Nobody would have seen her sitting there with him, his little corner hidden from the heavy traffic of the library. After a while he had given up trying to understand what the swot was hoping to achieve by infringing upon his peace so he had resolutely returned to working on his Transfiguration homework.

When she had finally gotten up to leave, he noted that it was just a little over ten minutes before dinner time. “Thanks for letting me use the book, Malfoy.”

From what he can tell, the school isn’t abuzz with gossip surrounding the two of them so he can only assume that she had told no one of their little study session, nor the two that had followed the first. He doesn’t know what they’re doing but he knows that he doesn’t mind it as much as he’d like to fool himself into thinking.

“Draco.”

He knows the taste of his name, of course. Draco tastes like an expensive brand of chocolate that his mother had indulged him with when he was a kid, and Malfoy tastes like leather. The fact that his name tastes like chocolate had been the only redeeming quality he found out of having sex with Pansy. Every time she moaned his name, the taste of chocolate would make the flashes of coal slightly worth the trouble.

Hermione’s voice doesn’t bother him anymore. What does bother him is the fact that he has spent months imagining what colour her moans would be and what colour his name would take when it leaves her lips.

Now he knows the answer to one of those things. It’s salmon pink, much like what her other notes sound like, the ones she would produce when talking about a subject only she knows about in class and the ones that would leave her lips when something particularly good happens to her.

He can’t imagine a reason why she’s speaking his name like that, but he turns his eyes to her and gestures for her to keep speaking. He can only hope that she doesn’t notice the blood rushing to fill his cheeks in the darkness.

“Why did you save me last year?”

The question catches him by surprise, so much so that he stops walking and only stares at her for a long moment. He instantly knows that she’s talking about the world cup, about the warning he had given the trio. Slowly, his features harden, and he feels a scowl replacing his baffled expression. “Is that why you’ve been hanging around me? You think we can become what, friends, because you assumed that I had saved you that night?”

She doesn’t immediately respond, instead taking a step closer to him. He feels his chest tighten at the proximity, every word out of his father’s mouth about pureblood superiority suddenly swimming through his head and causing an explosion of varied flavours to occur on his tongue. She’s so close, close enough that he can see the freckles dotting her nose, close enough that he can detect the scent of coconuts from her hair.

“I didn’t assume anything, Malfoy. You saved me that night.” 

Aunt Bellatrix trains him, and she becomes fascinated with his _condition_ when she learns about it from his mind. It occupies her interests enough that she doesn’t stumble upon the thoughts of her, and he’s so frightened by the possibility of her finding out that he’s been lusting over a muggle-born that it speeds up the process.

He’s always been a quick study, but there’s nothing like the fear of your infatuation being exposed to your deranged aunt to really get someone to master a spell.

He had expected that the dark mark would affect his condition, make the colours duller and the flavours blander. He’s right—once the ugly black thing gets branded on his skin, he can instantly tell that the colours will be nearly transparent now, the various hues no longer as defined as before and no longer obstructing his vision. His aunt tells him it’s a good thing, as he wouldn’t want those silly hallucinations coming in the way of a successful Avada or Crucio. The thought of the Dark Lord’s name no longer brings up an overpowering seaweed flavour, the taste subdued now.

When his mother plays the piano for him, the colours are still brighter and more pronounced than when people speak, but it’s no longer a fireworks display. She looks at him with a forlorn expression, one that he hadn’t expected but can understand because, as much as he hated the migraines he got from those colours, they had been his. They had been bright, sometimes blinding, sometimes erratic enough that he feared he would go into a seizure, sometimes causing him to miss the target of a hex, but they had been _his_.

With his Occlumency walls safely in place, he allows himself to think of her name. The Sauvignon Blanc isn’t nearly as potent as before, the flavour of the green apples no longer as crisp, but he tells himself he can only be thankful that it’s still there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: There is a very brief mention of r*pe NOT involving any of the main characters. Nothing explicit, just Death Eaters being Death Eaters.
> 
> UPDATE 07/30/2020: This chapter now includes a quick sketch that I made of our favourite controversial couple.

Potter’s following him around. He had thought that maybe breaking the bloke’s nose and leaving him hidden under his own invisibility cloak would get rid of the nosy scarhead, but that had been a mistake on his part. Now he feels the other wizard’s eyes constantly on him, and if he had the same energy as last year, he would have teased Potter for having a crush on him. Unfortunately, the world looks substantially bleaker now, with his condition significantly impaired, and so he doubts that he would still find pleasure in his old shenanigans.

He concedes that nothing would look cheery when one has a skull branded onto their skin, directly connected to a megalomaniac hellbent on killing one of your classmates. Even the sweetness of the word cheery tastes like ash in his mouth these days, and he can no longer tell if what he’s tasting on his tongue from thinking of the word megalomaniac is the flavour of a kiwi or that of a pear.

Pansy seems to have recovered from their messy break up, shifting from pointedly ignoring him to constantly hovering around him and acting like a worried girlfriend. It especially annoys him as her voice produces some of the most monotonous hues he’s ever seen coming from one person, her only contender for the crown being his godfather and the former Durmstrang headmaster turned fugitive.

The great hall, previously a place where he would often get lost drowning in the seas of flashing colours, now looks like it is littered with gossamers of barely-there pigments. From where he’s sitting, he can see Granger and her two wanker friends whispering to each other. She’s arguing with them (real shocker that is) and he can see a look of irritation on her face being directed at Potter. He almost smiles at this, but then her eyes suddenly flit to meet his and, stupidly enough, he feels himself freeze at the contact.

She must realise that he’s been watching them, because she raises one eyebrow at him and doesn’t stop staring until the plates are magically being cleared from the table, even when he finally breaks from the intensity of her gaze and looks away first.

He knows this because every time he looks to check if she’s no longer staring at him, their eyes would meet before his would snap away to look back down at his mutilated food. It’s odd, not to mention stressful, because what he needs right now is for people like Potter and Pansy and Hermione Granger to _leave him alone_.

He has a mission that’s doomed to fail, after all, and he would rather stumble through that without those three constantly monitoring him.

Legilimens tastes like strawberry profiteroles and Occlumens tastes like Arabic coffee—they’re flavours he finds odd to associate with his godfather as he can’t imagine the man enjoying pastries and drinking anything other than unsweetened tea.

“I see your Aunt has taught you Occlumency,” Snape finally says, having spent the last three minutes trying to break into Draco’s mind. “Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, Draco, trust that I am capable of helping—,” he begins to offer, but Draco cuts him off.

“I don’t need your help,” he grits out. “I was chosen for this. He trusts me to do this.” It’s a lie that he keeps telling himself, but Occlumency doesn’t work on one’s own mind and he can only pretend to believe the sham for so long—he knows that this task had been placed upon his shoulders as punishment for each and every one of his father’s failures, hand delivered by the Dark Lord himself, complete with the Dark Mark and a lovely death threat.

Suddenly, the older wizard begins throwing silencing charms all over the classroom, his tunnel-like eyes never once leaving Draco. “Do you even have the slightest idea how to cast any of the Unforgivables?”

Draco inwardly cringes. He had witnessed the Dark Lord performing all those spells, watched as subdued shades of navy blue intermingled with the green and red lights of the curses. Avada Kedavra had tasted like burnt meringue, the flavour not unlike that of Harry Potter’s combined name. Hearing the Dark Lord torture someone with repeated incantations of Crucio had assaulted his tongue with the taste of melting ice, more of a sensation than an actual flavour. Imperio, as he had come to learn, tastes like the air after a period of rain.

His mind had reeled at how innocent these curses had tasted on his tongue, when he could not even attempt to cast the Patronus charm, the purest of the spells in his opinion, as the incantation brought about a disagreeable fishy flavour. Expelliarmus he could manage quite easily, disarming people all the while savouring the taste of lemon sherbet on his taste buds.

“Can you conjure the Dark Mark, Draco?” Snape continues, either oblivious or uncaring that Draco had gone and retreated into his own mind. “Do you even know the incantation?” 

“Morsmordre,” he easily answers, but his voice is barely above a whisper. He prays he never has to cast that spell as he does not particularly like the taste of rust on his tongue. When Snape does not respond to that, Draco turns away and begins to head out of the room, shoving the door open and fleeing from his godfather before the man can further prove to him how unfit he is to take on the role of a Death Eater.

Petrichor. It’s the name of the taste on his tongue as he leaves the Three Broomsticks, fake galleons tightly clutched in one hand and the feeling of guilt clawing at his heart.

(Upon inspection, he admits to himself and to himself only that the guilt wasn’t so much over what he had done to Rosmerta, but more because of the fact that he had stolen Granger’s ideas and used them for his own twisted needs.)

“Why are you slacking off on school-work?”

His physical desire to be with her is still surprisingly there, but he had demanded from the Head Boy that he change his patrol partner to no avail. Draco suspects that the Slytherin is aware that the Malfoy family is not in such a good place, as even the mention of his father could not change the mind of the older student.

“Leave it, Granger. It’s none of your business what I do.”

“It’s just curious, is all,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard a word that he said. “Last year you spent four hours working on one Transfiguration homework, and now you’ve already missed two. Makes one wonder, what had happened over the summer that would warrant such a change—”

The minute his hands wrap around her shoulders, he regrets it, but not enough to stop himself from pushing her against a wall and invading her personal space. There’s an inch or two of space separating their faces, and he can barely stop himself from getting lost in the sea of her freckles. “I said leave it, you filthy Mud—”

“What’s so different about you now that you’d even pay someone to take your place in the Slytherin quidditch team?”

When she speaks, her breath hits him and overwhelms him with the scent of spearmint, presumably from her toothpaste. It washes out the dirty word that he had almost used on her, and before he can stop himself, he’s groaning in response to the stimulus. It startles the both of them, and he can imagine that the blush currently riding high on her cheeks is identical to the one staining his.

He pushes away from her, striding back the direction they came from and cutting the patrol short. He decides then and there that if he has to quit being a prefect to be away from her, he’ll do it.

The following week he has to listen to her describe her love potion. Amortentia, the word, tastes like overly ripe mangoes, just a good day or two away from rotting. He can’t even muster enough energy to be angry at the fact that he catches a whiff of spearmint, vanilla, coconut, and green apples when he passes by the blasted cauldron.

His tongue feels cold, but before he can cast the spell, the one that leaves Potter’s mouth replaces the ice with the slight heat of cumin. It’s a spell that he’s not familiar with, but when it hits him, he feels the gashes opening up on his skin as he falls to the bathroom floor.

It’s a queer feeling, being aware of one’s own approaching death. At first it fills him with a sense of dread, panic at the thought that everything ends there, but then as the blood drains out of his clothes to stain the tiles he’s lying helpless on, it takes with it all the regret, the hope, leaving him feeling numb as his life slips from his fingers.

His eyelids close, his ears barely pick up the sound of hurried footsteps, of someone crying beside him, and his tongue tells him that Vulnera tastes like red grapes and Sanentur tastes like sulphur.

He doesn’t know how she does it, but she sneaks in to the infirmary in the middle of the night and proceeds to spend ten minutes just standing by his bed, arms crossed over her chest, lips set into an angry line, and eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“Crying for me now?” he asks, voice rough from disuse. “Save it for someone who matters.”

“He didn’t mean to do it,” she whispers back, sinking onto the chair beside his bed. “He wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“I don’t care what he was trying to do, _I_ was trying to kill him.” The lie comes easily enough, what with the Occlumency walls and the fact that he honestly doesn’t have a clear idea what he had been trying to do.

Hermione doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring, but the tears don’t fall from her eyes and he’s grateful for that. He wants to remind her that he’s the bad guy in her story, the same bloke who had looked at her like she was beneath him simply because her parents weren’t magical. One successful paired homework and a couple of times spent sharing a library table shouldn’t change that, shouldn’t erase what he was and what he is.

He almost wants to show her his Dark Mark just so she’d stop trying to act like he’s still got a soul hiding somewhere inside his body.

“You should sleep,” she finally says, after a long moment of just staring at each other. “Merlin knows you need it.” With that she rises from her seat, walking away from him. He panics at the sight, his mouth opening before his brain can register what he’s about to do.

“Don’t come back here, Granger,” he tells her. When she pauses her stride but doesn’t turn to look back at him, he clarifies, “Don’t come back to Hogwarts.”

The word tastes like burnt meringue on his tongue, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Instead, he finds himself talking, telling the old man everything that he’s done during the year, as if he would vomit if he stopped talking. He calls her a mudblood for appearance’s sake and actually laughs when Dumbledore asks him to not use that word in front of him.

Defenceless tastes like biting the rind of a citrus, bitter and unappealing. It’s a word that certainly does not suit the greatest wizard of modern times.

The promise of safety is a jumble of salty and bitter words, one in particular tasting like sardines and another like freshy harvested caviar. He rambles, lowers his wand, then the others rush in to bare witness to his incapability of becoming a murderer.

Albus Dumbledore’s wine-coloured pleas are answered by Snape’s sweet and smoky spell.

He quickly becomes intimate with the sensation of melting ice on his tongue. It’s when he spends most of the day torturing people that he feels the slightest bit thankful for his impaired condition.

It’s when he watches his deranged aunt torture _her_ that he yearns the most for the colours to come back, to obstruct his vision so it would be filled with explosions of orange and teal and he won’t have to look her in the eye and face her judgment. He would much rather take the cold numbing his tongue than to look at her lying near lifeless on the ground.

Working as a double agent is beyond exhausting, but he’d sooner get killed than do nothing and allow the Dark Lord to win this war. It’s been three months since he had demanded from his godfather that he take him to the other side, for Severus to make him a spy not unlike the older man. For a moment, they had seized each other up, the both of them waiting for the other to turn out as a cleverly placed decoy to sniff out traitors amongst their ranks.

It’s been three months since he’s been allowed free passage into 12 Grimmauld Place, three months since his godfather had told him everything he needed to know in order to be allowed into the ranks of the Order, three months since he was stunned then questioned by Mad-Eye Moody while under a powerful dose of Veritaserum, unable to use Occlumency to counter the effects of the potion, and three months since Remus Lupin introduced him to the rest of the Order as their new spy.

Draco had tried to explain to Kingsley, Moody, and Lupin that Severus had been acting under Dumbledore’s commands, but the three of them had insisted that even if it were true, it would be too risky for Snape to keep working with them. Still, the clarification on what had truly happened that night at the Astronomy tower proves useful in that they relax just enough to start using the safehouse again.

He doesn’t see Potter even once during those three months, and he doesn’t try to ask them about his whereabouts. The less he knows about the Order’s plans, the better. He does, however, see the ginger weasel on occasion, and he does his best to not hex the bloke on sight.

It’s difficult, but he manages.

The concealment charm is just wearing off as he enters the house, closing the door behind him, when he hears and sees them; the sound of a piano playing invades his ears and colours his vision. The sound doesn’t come together to form music, just random notes here and there as if the person playing them is just testing out the keys. Still, it’s been too long since he’s last heard music and last seen the colours dancing in his vision, as neither he nor his mother have found much reason to touch the grand piano in the manor after he took the Dark Mark.

(It is, after all, quite difficult to indulge in music when Death Eaters are torturing and raping people just down the hall.)

He follows the sound further into the house and finds Hermione Granger sitting in front of the rusty piano. She looks up upon his entrance, her finger hovering over one of the keys, then their eyes meet. Draco mentally prepares a speech declaring himself their ally, but she surprises him by smiling.

“Hello, Draco. I was told I’d see you here,” she says, her voice causing the familiar pinks to flash before him. There’s a pang in his chest when he sees how translucent they are, barely there, and he regrets not enjoying the sights when he had the privilege to. “I must say, I was glad when they told me you defected, but I wasn’t exactly surprised.”

“Why’s that?” he asks, genuinely confused by her declaration. He moves towards her, placing a finger on the piano and swiping at the dust that had accumulated there. He reaches for his wand and performs a quick scourgify, moving to sit beside her. He sits on the very edge of the wooden bench, keeping as large as a distance between them as it would allow. He’s surprised she doesn’t jump up and slap him across the face for daring to sit next to her.

“You did save me that night, and you didn’t kill Dumbledore,” she says, a smirk playing on her lips and a knowing look in her eyes. She gestures to the piano and asks, “Do you know how to play?”

He’s slightly taken aback by the sudden change in topic, but he doesn’t show her his surprise, nodding his head in affirmation. “Do you?”

“No. You should play; I’d love to hear it.”

He should really be asking her where the others are, preferably Lupin as he has information to relay to them, but his hands rise and then his fingers are tentatively pressing down on a few keys. The colours instantly return, and with that he feels a surge of confidence that has him transitioning from hesitant strokes of the keys to the beginning notes of one of his favourite pieces. He plays for a while, closing his eyes and enjoying the dance of the colours behind his lids, and when he opens them again they seek her out as if on instinct.

The look in her eyes as they meet his has him cutting off the music, his fingers lifting from the keys mid stroke. The silence that fills the room as the last vibrations from the piano fizzle out is awkward, to say the least, and he finds himself wracking his mind for something to say.

She beats him to it by declaring, “I didn’t know you listened to muggle classical music. That was Chopin, wasn’t it?”

He nods, still unable to tear his gaze away from her. The words that stumble out of his mouth make it out of their confines purely on accident, only because he’s lost in the colour of her eyes—honey, harvested during the late summer. “His pieces have the prettiest colours.”

Confusion settles on her features and he wishes he could take it back, wishes he could fulfil his promise to his mother that he would never tell anyone about this but then again, he has broken more promises than he can remember, some that had been more detrimental to their well-being than admitting to someone that he sees coloured sounds and tastes flavoured names. Her eyebrows are furrowed, and he can barely stop himself from reaching out to smooth away her frown.

“What do you mean, they have the prettiest colours? Do you have synaesthesia?”

He’s already opening his mouth to explain but then her words register to him and he blurts out, “What? Do I have what?”

“Synaesthesia, from the Greek words sún meaning “with” and aísthēsis meaning “sensation”, is a condition wherein the synesthete, a term for a person who has the condition, is able to process data in the form of several senses all at once,” she explains, and he’s instantly taken back to their classes at Hogwarts, when her hand would shoot up and she would then proceed to unload a verbal vomit of information unto all of them. “For example, some people can see colours when they hear music, or they can taste certain words. It’s a very rare condition, and most people who have it go on to become artists or writers.” 

She must mistake his astounded expression as a response to her vast knowledge on the topic because she blushes and looks away. Draco, on the other hand, is experiencing something akin to euphoria. He has never heard anyone describe his little “talent” so accurately, sod it, he has never heard anyone describe it, period. In hindsight, he thinks he shouldn’t be so surprised that Hermione Granger, swottiest of swots, would know that something like this exists. _That someone like him exists._

“It’s a muggle thing, then? I’ve never heard of anyone else in the wizarding community talk about something like this, and I’ve tried to research about it but nothing ever came up in my readings,” he tells her, staring at the colours his voice makes.

“I honestly don’t know,” she admits, looking back towards him and appearing somewhat sheepish, as if her not knowing everything is something to be embarrassed about. “What do you see?”

“I taste words and names. Everything has a flavour associated with them. I see bursts of colours when I hear music, and I see fainter, more translucent colours when people speak.”

“Words have colour, too? Right now, you’re seeing colours as we speak?”

“It’s not really the words that are coloured, it’s the notes that people produce when they talk,” he elaborates. Running a hand through his hair, he decides to reveal some more information to her, information that he had thought he would carry to the grave with him. “When you speak, you make pastel colours, mostly pinks and blue. They used to be so harsh and bright when we were younger, used to give me headaches every time you opened your mouth in class.”

“Is that why you hated me so much?”

He feels guilty in an instant, remembering all the things he said to her back then. “That was one thing, it was another thing that I’ve been told my whole life that muggle-borns don’t have a place in our world, but obviously you made me question that by besting me in everything except flying a broom.”

She laughs, a quiet one, but it makes him realise that she’s one of those rare people who have musical laughter. “What does my name taste like?” 

Draco draws in a quick breath, quickly looking away from her searching eyes. He begins to question what he’s doing, sitting beside her, playing music for her, telling her the one thing he has never voluntarily told anyone else, lusting after her, wanting her.

_(Falling for her.)_

“Hermione tastes like Sauvignon Blanc and Granger tastes like green apples,” he lets out in one breath, overcome by a misplaced need to be honest with her in that moment. Before she can make a comment, before she can do something like reveal to him that she had somehow known his bias for green apples, he rushes to add, “I can’t taste it anymore as well as I used to, and the colours aren’t as vivid as they were before the Dark Mark. It dulled everything.”

He looks away from her, resolutely staring at the piano in front of him and wishing that someone would walk into the safehouse and put an end to this bizarre interaction. Talking to her has been the only good thing that has happened to him in months, maybe in years, but he’s overwhelmed by her and by his need for proximity. It’s ridiculous, wanting someone you had actively tormented for two years, wanting someone you had watched get tortured by your crazed aunt while you stood by and did nothing.

“Does it interfere with your vision, the colours?”

He frowns, turning his head to look back at her. “When there’s too many people talking, it used to throw me off a bit, but not ever since I got the mark.”

She looks pensive, her eyes unfocused before they look up to meet his confused gaze. “After this, what are you going to do about your aim?”

“Pardon?”

“The Dark Mark, it would fade once Voldemort’s dead,” she says, gesturing to his arm. “I can only assume that when that happens, the effects of the mark on your synaesthesia would also disappear or won’t be as potent as it is right now.”

He feels his chest tighten at what she’s building up to, feels something like hope blossoming there. It’s an emotion that he has almost entirely forgotten, and he’s not certain that he should be allowing her to fill him with such a thing when he had only planned to swing by and give information then be back out again in less than thirty minutes—

“What are you going to do when we defeat him, Draco?”

Severus knows what he’s doing or, at least, knows what potion he’s about to attempt to make. The man takes one good look at the ingredients laid out on the table, one good look at Draco, then wandlessly summons a quill and a piece of parchment. As his godfather writes, Draco begins the preparations for the brewing process, double and triple checking that he has everything he needs.

When he’s finished writing, Severus hands over the piece of parchment and leaves the hidden cottage without uttering a single word. When he peers down at it, he realises the man had just given him something that he would treasure for the rest of his inevitably short life.

There, in his trembling hands, are the potion master’s notes on how to successfully brew the concoction without ending up with a few missing limbs. The word Ashwinder tastes like coriander, squill bulb tastes like a combination of mayonnaise and strawberries, Occamy tastes like dried up carrots, and Murtlap tastes like the back of one’s hand.

He comes by again, nearly a month after his last visit, and this time Remus is there to receive the information.

Granger sits in the meeting, inviting herself into the table with a tray of tea for the three of them. He’s the only one with a cup that has a coaster and Remus eyes it with a smirk on his tired face. Hermione sits beside him, self-inking quill in one hand, parchment in front of her, and gives him an expectant look that he takes as his cue to start.

It takes him twenty-three minutes to finish relaying every detail he’d been able to cram into his head from the meetings he had attended, every drunken whisper, every careless slip of the tongue, he had shoved into a corner of his brain only to purge it all out right onto her messy notes.

His old DADA professor nods at him, tells him he should stay and finish his tea, then the older man is pushing away from the table and leaving the two of them alone in the old house. He performs a quick warming charm on his tea, taking in the decaying wood of the table while she worked on tidying up her notes. Once she’s done, she looks up at him and he takes the liberty of warming up her tea for her.

“Thank you,” she says, reaching for her cup and bringing it to her lips. “It’s already horrid enough when it’s hot, it’s just plain unacceptable when it’s lukewarm.”

He only nods. He doesn’t tell her it’s the best tea he’s had in nearly a month solely because she’s the person he’s enjoying it with. Not even the most expensive tea in the world would taste good when you have to drink it in the presence of other Death Eaters.

“The last time I saw you, you looked like you hadn’t slept in two weeks. That was two years ago and you still look like you haven’t slept a wink.”

Draco raises an eyebrow at this, gulping down a mouthful of the herbal tea concoction before answering, “The last time I saw you, you were being tortured by my crazed aunt with a spell that makes me feel like I’ve put a cube of ice on my tongue to melt. That was roughly a year ago and you didn’t look quite so good yourself then, Granger.”

“I was actually referring to that night in the infirmary.”

He rolls his eyes at her, plucking the parchment from her fingers and reading over her notes. “I know what you were referring to. It wasn’t the last time you saw me.”

“You’re right, I saw you last month, so I guess we’re both recalling our last meeting all wrong.”

He looks at her, watches her raise her drink to her lips to hide her smile. There’s mirth in her eyes and he’s almost foolish enough to think that she’s flirting with him, but he quickly kills the thought, crushes it underneath his dragonhide shoes and fires a hex at it for good measure.

“It was very nice of you to try and save me again, that night at the infirmary.” 

“When will you stop assuming that everything I do is an attempt to save you—”

He’s used to seeing and hearing her cut off people mid-speech, usually talking over them to correct the way they’re saying an incantation or just to tell them that they’re wrong and she’s right. A couple of times, he had seen her walk away from the weasel during an argument, causing the ginger to splutter at her sudden departure.

He can’t recall a time when he’s seen her kiss someone to shut them up, but that’s what she’s doing to him.

Hermione’s lips are warm, probably from the tea, and they’re soft against his own. His eyes had closed from her sudden movement, bracing himself to get a much-deserved punch, and he doesn’t dare open them now. Her lips start to move against his and he answers in earnest, deciding he’ll enjoy it while it lasts and dissect every moment of this later, in the false safety of his own room at the manor. When he feels the tip of her tongue touch his bottom lip, he immediately grants her access, reckless in his need to finally taste whichever part of her that she’s offering.

She’s a clumsy kisser, using far too much force when she bites his bottom lip, and it’s the best kiss he’s ever had. Her tongue tastes like the tea they’ve just shared, with just the slightest hint of spearmint. When she moans, he answers it with a groan of his own, his hands finally moving to cradle her face. He feels her fingers toying with the topmost button of his shirt, popping the first three open and sliding her hands inside to touch the skin of his collar and the base of his neck.

She breaks away from his lips and trails kisses down his neck, starting at the corner of his mouth and ending at the hollow of his throat.

“Your toothpaste, it’s fennel, isn’t it?”

He tries to clear the fog from his brain but her hot breath repeatedly touching the skin of his neck isn’t helping. Somehow, his own fingers have tangled themselves into the mess she calls her hair, and he spends a quiet moment just admiring how surprisingly soft it is to the touch. When he finally gets his mouth to move, the only word he can manage is, “What?”

She lifts her head, moving to place her lips on his once more, speaking against his mouth and letting her breath fan his face. “Fennel toothpaste, it’s what your breath smelled like back in sixth year.”

His mother eyes him from across the table, one hand soundlessly stirring her tea, the other idly playing with her wand. They’re all alone in the dining room, his father having ambled away after finishing off three bites of his breakfast and three glasses of brandy.

“You’ve been busy,” she says, placing the teaspoon aside and taking a sip from her tea. He knows that tone, and that tone paired with the look she’s giving him means nothing but trouble for him.

“Death Eater duties,” he offers, his own tone bordering between sarcastic and bored. Truth be told, he has been busy—busy smuggling information to the Order and busy snogging Granger the moment they’re left alone in that house. It never goes further than hurried, messy kisses, and he tells himself he’s fine with that.

They almost get caught one day, with her sitting on the dinner table and him standing in between her thighs. He doesn’t know how he had somehow missed the sound of the door opening, but then colours float into his vision and he jumps away from her.

She’s hopping off the table, wiping at the residual saliva on her lips, when Weasley walks in along with Tonks. His presence immediately brings back the taste of his name, aggravated by the fact that Granger acknowledges them by saying both their names. Tonks tastes like butter cookies, and it would have paired nicely with the weasel’s milk-tasting name had the milk not been curdled.

It’s a good thing, really, because the taste helps kill the boner he’d been trying to hide.

It’s the first time he sees Potter after the incident at the Manor, and he barely pays attention to the boy wonder and the fact that he looks almost as pale as Draco himself because he’s reaching for Granger’s quill and a scrap of parchment. The people in the room grow quiet as he writes, and he’s thankful that they’re unknowingly helping him focus by not creating unnecessary colours to cloud his vision.

Merlin knows he needs it, the assault on his tongue already distracting enough without the visual part of his condition contributing to the skirmish. He keeps writing, struggling to maintain a straight face as flavours like soap, tripe, and horseradish clash on his taste buds, fitting together as well as mismatched puzzle pieces would.

When he’s done, he hands the paper over to Potter. His eyes search the room, finally landing and getting lost in late summer honey as the man meant to save them all reads over all the information Draco’s been able to gather about the attack to be launched at Hogwarts tomorrow. Tomorrow, Voldemort will know that there’s an informant in their midst, and Draco will confirm it by fighting for the Order. Tomorrow, he’ll dose his mother with felix felicis, the only protection he can grant her when it’s revealed to everyone on the dark side that he’s a traitor.

Tomorrow, both him and Hermione may die, but right now he ignores the sound of Harry Potter’s voice as he relays orders to the people gathered around the table, ignores the green and red colours swimming in his vision, ignores the flavours on his tongue in favour of staring into her eyes for reassurance that he knows he won’t ever find there.

He’s surprised he hasn’t had a seizure yet. He had physically felt it when Voldemort died, the burning on his arm disappearing like a bubble popping out of existence. Also like a bubble, the synaesthesia comes back in full force. It’s like having your hearing muffled by water stuck in your ear, and when the water finally gets dislodged the sound comes back in a rush, only for him it’s the colours and the flavours that crash down on him like a tidal wave.

It knocks him off his feet and he lands on his knees, staring at all the colours bursting in and out of his sight. He can barely see the people all around him, can barely focus on anything as he keeps whispering her name and relishing the full effects of Sauvignon Blanc and green apples on his taste buds.

Someone’s kissing him, and even with the colours blocking his vision with his eyes open and the hues persisting behind his lids with his eyes closed, he knows it’s _her_. He knows it’s her even though she doesn’t taste like the crappy tea they have at the safehouse, even though she fills his mouth with the taste of blood instead of the natural taste of her tongue.

The colours start to fade as he takes notice of the hush that slowly envelops the grounds. He imagines that they must make quite the sight, Draco Malfoy and Hermione granger all bloodied up and kissing each other, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“You were right,” he whispers against her lips, opening his eyes and staring into pools of late summer honey. “I have to figure out what to do about my aim.”

Granger does not taste like green apples, nor does her skin remind him of an expensive bottle of wine. She tastes like the soap she had used to aggressively scrub out the grime and blood from every inch of her skin, leaving her pink and tender. He understands the almost obsessive way with which she cleans herself—it’s been a week since the war ended but he still wakes up feeling dirty, feeling like he would never get rid of the warm, sticky blood on his hands. He knows she hadn’t killed anyone, unlike him, but she feels dirty all the same.

Her bones are prominent, especially the ones encasing her lungs and her heart, and he takes his time kissing down her ribs to her jutting hipbones. She giggles and it makes him see soft bursts of salmon pink. “I’m ticklish there,” she says, and it makes him see pale yellows, the colour of daffodils. He’s never seen her produce that colour before and he chases after it for a few seconds, enthralled by its appearance.

He tries to keep as quiet as he can, tries his best not to adulterate her colours and her flavours with his own voice. When she had emerged from the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around her body, dripping water everywhere, he had told her in a quiet voice to come closer. He had watched the deep burgundy dance in and out his vision and had decided that he’d much rather see pale pinks and Varathane bleached blues.

Now he’s inching closer to her centre and she’s making breathy little sighs of pleasure, her fingers finding purchase in his still damp hair. He’s doing his utmost best to keep his head as blank as possible, to taste only her on his tongue. She smells like soap down there too, and when he uses his fingers to spread her, he marvels at how pink and wet she is for him.

“ _Draco_.”

Salmon pink flashes behind his closed lids and his favourite chocolate melts on his tongue immediately. He has to kiss her thighs, biting into the soft flesh in an effort to contain himself from tasting that part of her. He doesn’t want to taste chocolates in his mouth, he wants to know what she tastes like without the synaesthesia, so he kisses her thighs and looks up at her. He watches her bite her lower lip, nod at him once, and he knows she understands.

It takes him a moment, but his senses finally calm down enough that his tongue can only detect the faint salt and soap of her thighs. Her hands are still buried in his hair and she begins to tug his face towards her centre. He looks up at her once more, maintaining eye contact when he runs the flat of his tongue over her exposed slit.

They moan almost in unison, both their voices filling his eyes with colours that he hadn’t thought would fit well but surprisingly compliment each other. She doesn’t taste like Sauvignon Blanc but he thinks he could get drunk all the same. He fucks her with his tongue, watches her bite around her closed fist to keep her moans under control.

She loses the battle when his lips close around her clit and his name comes pouring out of her mouth. He groans against her slick lips, using the flat of his tongue to swipe at her clit and two fingers to fuck her entrance. Her moans grow louder as she nears her release and he’s glad he had put up silencing charms on the room—the rest of the Order still staying in the house would probably appreciate not hearing them having sex.

When she comes, she nearly shouts his name. He pulls back and sheaths himself inside of her with one push, gripping her hips and feeling her walls fluttering all around his cock. He doesn’t move an inch, feelings the muscles in his stomach tightening from the effort it’s taking him to hold back from fucking her into the mattress.

She reaches out to him, pulling him down to kiss her and taste herself on his mouth. With their lips still pressed together, their chests flushed against each other, she whispers, “You can move now.”

It’s all the encouragement he needs. Her name springs out from him unbidden, and it’s one of those moments when he can almost convince himself that he can get drunk just from saying her name.

He makes her come three more times, twice on his cock, and he would have gone for more but she starts crying after the third time and he knows what those tears are for. War had taken away his father to Azkaban and, along with the older man, much of Draco’s prejudice and the things he used to believe in. It had cost him the life of one of his friends and had crushed any chance of him ever producing a Patronus, but he knows she had lost so much more than that. He was part of the Order, a valuable spy that had ultimately help tip the scale in their favour, but he hadn’t been friends with any of those people.

As for her, they had become her family after she had been forced to give up her parents. They won the war, but he suspects that it would take a long time before her hands stop shaking, before she can go out without holding on to her wand as if her life still depends on it, before she can go to sleep without worrying that she’ll wake up screaming her head off because of a nightmare.

“I didn’t know orgasms could be that overwhelming,” she whispers sheepishly, the tip of her fingers tracing the Sectumsempra scars among the other blemishes he now sports.

The word orgasm tastes like a slice of Victoria sponge. He wraps a moth-bitten quilt around their naked bodies, and when he tells her to go to sleep, her Sauvignon Blanc-flavoured name on his tongue and her rose-coloured laugh behind his eyes are the things that lull him to the most peaceful sleep he’s ever had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did promise smut, and it was originally supposed to be much more explicit than this but this version felt more appropriate for the tone of the story, so i just wanna say sorry for that  
> also, it was never meant to be this long? so yes sorry about that too  
> shoutout to RaymondShaw for giving me the idea to have Draco describe the taste of Expelliarmus and Morsmordre!!!  
> your comments were all so encouraging and heartwarming, and i want to thank you all for giving my fic a chance :)
> 
> The scene where Draco describes the taste of the word defenceless was actually inspired by this canon scene in the book:  
> "... Draco, you have had several long minutes now, we are quite alone, I am more defenseless than you can have dreamed of finding me, and still you have not acted. . . .”  
> Malfoy’s mouth contorted involuntarily, as though he had tasted something very bitter.  
> \- Chapter 27, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

**Author's Note:**

> i'm writing two other dramione fics but this one just hit me while i was watching a documentary (on fungi, mind you) and i just had to get it out  
> next chapter is already half-done btw


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